Contributor Spotlight: Kashawn Taylor

“Burned” by Kashawn Taylor appeared in in Issue 43 and can be found here.

We’d love to hear more about this essay.

I wrote this piece while incarcerated.  I lived in a dorm with 100 other men.  We saw each other all day, every day and to pass time we told stories about our lives.  It was really, really easy to overshare almost immediately because we lived in a therapeutic community and were required to attend three “recovery meetings” that our peers hosted in the dorm each week.  Sharing in meetings, I believe, led to a weird comfortability among the guys and I told this story to my friends.  Enough time had passed that I found the situation funny, and so did everyone else. So, I thought: Why not write it down?  Everything else I had been writing was so serious, and I needed a change of pace.

What was the most difficult part in writing this piece?

“Burned” was actually easy to write.  It was fun, and helped me get back to my writing roots.  If I had to choose a part that was difficult, it would be the beginning of the essay.  Choosing the correct words to talk about the queer community without offending (or over-offending, because there’s always someone who takes offense) too much took a few tries.  The beginning mentions some stereotypes which, in my experience, have been true.  It doesn’t apply to everyone, and generalizations are never good, but choosing to write of my own experience in such a candid way was the most difficult part.  The story after, however, came easily.

Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.

My favorite book that I’ve read recently is How High We Go in the Dark in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu.  What a wonderfully crafted novel.  It evokes so many emotions.  It’s a novel, but written more as a series of interconnected stories which span centuries about an arctic virus that is unleashed and completely changes humanity.  I can’t remember any other book that had me so gagged, as the kids say nowadays.  I read it in prison and forced some of my friends to read it.  I couldn’t shut up about it.  Now, I recommend it to anyone who needs a good read.

If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?

Since she’s written several books, I am going to say Chelsea Handler.  Now, hear me out: When I first started writing back in high school, I was obsessed with Chelsea Handler.  The first full-length manuscript I ever wrote was inspired by her books about wild stories, one-night stands, crazy friends, and things like that.  Life Will be the Death of Me showed so much growth in her writing while still retaining her trademark humor and wit.  She’s the reason I felt confident enough to write about contracting gonorrhea in the first place.  I’d really love to pick her brain about her own writing process, because she’s actually really smart and a lot of people write her off.  I don’t drink anymore, though, so it’d have to be coffee. Or mocktails.

What are you working on now? What’s next?

First and foremost, I have a collection of poetry coming out in March through Wayfarer Books called subhuman.  Some of those poems have been or will be featured in such journals and magazines as Poetry Magazine, Emergent Literary, The Shore Poetry, and Union Spring Literary Review.  Much of my writing energy is focused on school, however.  I am getting an MFA, my third degree after a BA and an MA.  But I am working on gathering some of my “prison prose” and putting it together in a collection of essays and short stories.  I also write speculative fiction under a pseudonym, which has been gaining some traction lately.  I love to keep myself busy, it keeps me out of trouble. 

Our thanks to Kashawn for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this essay. Read “Burned” here.

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